Energy costs are quickly rising in large-scale data centers and are soon
projected to overtake the cost of hardware. As a result, data center operators
have recently started turning into using more energy-friendly hardware. Despite
the growing body of research in power management techniques, there has been
little work to date on energy efficiency from a data management software
perspective.

In this paper, we argue that hardware-only approaches are only part of the
solution, and that data management software will be key in optimizing for
energy efficiency. We discuss the problems arising from growing energy use in
data centers and the trends that point to an increasing set of opportunities
for software-level optimizations. Using two simple experiments, we illustrate
the potential of such optimizations, and, motivated by these examples, we
discuss general approaches for reducing energy waste. Lastly, we point out
existing places within database systems that are promising for
energy-efficiency optimizations and urge the data management systems community
to shift focus from performance-oriented research to energy-efficient
computing.